Abstract Although many cases of stellar spin–orbit misalignment are known, it is usually unclear whether a single planet’s orbit was tilted or if the entire protoplanetary disk was misaligned. Measuring stellar obliquities in multitransiting planetary systems helps to distinguish these possibilities. Here, we present a measurement of the sky-projected spin–orbit angle for TOI-880 c (TOI-880.01), a member of a system of three transiting planets, using the Keck Planet Finder. We found that the host star is a K-type star ( T eff = 5050 ± 100 K). Planet b (TOI-880.02) has a radius of 2.19 ± 0.11 R ⊕ and an orbital period of 2.6 days; planet c (TOI-880.01) is a Neptune-sized planet with 4.95 ± 0.20 R ⊕ on a 6.4 days orbit; and planet d (TOI-880.03) has a radius of 3.4 0 − 0.21 + 0.22 R ⊕ and a period of 14.3 days. By modeling the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, we found the sky-projected obliquity to be ∣ λ c ∣ = 7 . 4 − 7.2 + 6.8 °, consistent with a prograde, well-aligned orbit. The lack of detectable rotational modulation of the flux of the host star and a low v sin i ⋆ (1.6 km s −1 ) imply slow rotation and correspondingly slow nodal precession of the planetary orbits and the expectation that the system will remain in this coplanar configuration. TOI-880 joins a growing sample of well-aligned, coplanar, multitransiting systems. Additionally, TOI-880 c is a promising target for James Webb Space Telescope follow-up, with a transmission spectroscopy metric of ∼170. We could not detect clear signs of atmospheric erosion in the H α line from TOI-880 c, as photoevaporation might have diminished for this mature planet.
Zhang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.